US election results a win for pollsters says Auckland politics expert
Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at a polling place on 5 November 2024 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Photo: MARIO TAMA / AFP
The US election numbers might be looking grim for Democrats, but an expert in politics and public policy says there's been a silver lining for pollsters.
Dr Tim Fadgen, senior lecturer in politics at the University of Auckland and Associate Director of Public Policy Institute, told Checkpoint's Lisa Owen the race has been tight, exactly as many polls predicted.
"It's been a tight race, and it was polled to be that way and it's turned out to be that way," he said.
There's a nervousness to call the swing states because it's tight, with a high vote count of around 90 to 93 percent, he said.
"I think that there was such backlash to some of the early calls in the last cycle that state officials are just trying to be very gradual and deliberate."
He said there will be more data in the days to come on voter groups.
"Certainly, some of the early exit polling showed that Trump maintained, well built and maintained an edge with Hispanic voters in many, many places, which was a bit of a surprise coming in given some of the things that happened at his rally, his closing rally.
"A guest insulted the whole nation, the whole island territory of Puerto Rico. But it didn't seem to make a dent, at least in terms of what we're seeing so far."
Trump took a negative approach to campaigning, he said.
"If you look at some of the some of the questions about voter attitudes, about the direction of the country's strains, about the economy and the direction of the country generally, I think those were under-reported, to be honest."
He said strains on the economy became a significant headwind for Trump.
"People were unhappy with the Biden economy and Harris, even though they had a change in candidate not too long ago, she had to wear that economy as her own and kind of swim upstream against that attitude.
"In hindsight, there'll be many who will say that perhaps you could have done more. But again, I think an economist would tell you it's often an attitude and a feeling that people have about how well they're doing, not the data itself.
He said if the polls were to be believed with the race being narrow, he wouldn't be surprised about how the election results have unfolded.
"I think in many of these states it just happened to be that they seem to be at this stage breaking more towards Donald Trump, and there's far fewer mail-in and other votes as we saw in 2020.
"We had Covid and a lot more people voting without going to the polls. These election officials were much more ready to take in the early vote to process it. It seems like much; much smoother processes were in place."
In regards to Iowa unexpectedly being won by Trump, people were surprised it was an outlier, he said.
"That poll tends to be a very accurate poll, and if it ends up being off by as much as it looks like, that will require some further investigation.
"We have to emphasise that the results might end up being much more consistent with the rest of the polls and how they said Iowa would turn out. But given the credibility of that pollster, in past cycles, that is something that will have to be investigated further for sure."
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